Haryana hospital admits fake patients for license

Kurukshetra (Haryana): You have seen Bollywood actor Sanjay Dutt’s ‘Munna Bhai MBBS’ wherein a young man passes himself off as the protagonist during a pre-medical entrance examination. But a private hospital in Haryana’s Kurukshetra has gone a step further allegedly admitting fake patients to show bed strength ahead of its mandatory inspection by the Medical Council of India (MCI).

Adesh Hospital in Kurukshetra allegedly paid villagers to pose as patients on October 3 in order to meet the MCI guidelines that state that a hospital seeking to admit 100 MBBS students must have 600 beds with at least 70 percent patient occupancy.

A person, an alleged employee of the hospital, can be heard in an audio clip offering money to villagers for posing as patients. A probe has been ordered by the state government in this regard.

JD Singh, a former village head, alleged that he had got a phone call from their employee who offered to give Rs 200 to each villager who would pose as a patient before the inspection team from the state health department.

“Sir, we need people from your village…tomorrow there is (an) inspection at our college. The health minister is coming. We want to take these people with us. We will admit them as patients. They just have to pose as patients. We will arrange free food and pay Rs. 200 per person,” the alleged employee is heard telling Singh.

The hospital, however, denied that the alleged person in the audio clip was an employee.

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A global anti-corruption watchdog says the United States has dropped four spots in its list of nations’ anti-corruption efforts and is now no longer listed in the top 20 for the first time.

Acting U.S. Representative at Transparency International, Zoe Reiter, calls a four point drop in the 2018 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) a “red flag.”

She says it comes at a time when the U.S. is experiencing “threats to its system of checks and balances” and an “erosion of ethical norms at the highest levels of power.”

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“If this trend continues, it would indicate a serious corruption problem in a country that has taken a lead on the issue globally,” Reiter says.

The United States scored a 71 in the perceptions index after scoring 75 the previous year.

“The expert opinion captured by the CPI supports the deep concern over corruption in government reported by America in our 2017 survey. Both experts and the public believe the situation is getting worse,” Reiter said.

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Transparency International uses several criteria for measuring how well a country is fighting corruption, including checks and balances on political power, controls on conflicts of interest and private influence on government, and voter suppression.